Microtops Aerosol Optical Depth

Aerosol optical depth - Microtops, aerosol optical depth and water vapor, AusCover supersites

Figure 1: Microtops instrument at Chowilla Supersite.

Link to the data

This data set consists of a shapefile/KMZ file of sunphotometer measurements. Information on the details of the attribute fields for the shapefile/KMZ file are located in this document in the section titled 'Shapefile/KMZ file attributes'.

Data licence and Access rights

Abstract or Summary

The acquisition of sunphotometer measurements are critical to capture vital data on atmospheric properties during airborne hyperspectral imaging campaigns as well as for measurements coinciding with the overpass of satellite sensors. The atmospheric properties measured are used in atmospheric correction of the remotely sensed image data. This data is primarily for input into atmospheric correction systems. It may also prove of use in validation of aerosol products such as MOD04 and the reflectance change method developed as part of CRC-SI project 4.1 which may be integrated into the Auscover 19 band reflectance product processing. It can also be used to check methods that produce water vapour directly from the data (SODA).  The MicroTops instruments referred to here capture solar radiance data in 5 wavelengths which are used to extract information on aerosol optical thickness and water vapour content. These two key parameters of interest are used as inputs for the atmospheric correction of remotely sensed image data.

Spatial and Temporal extents

Point of contact

Credit

The following organisations contributed to the data collection:

• Joint Remotes Sensing Research Project
• Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
• Curtin University
• University of Adelaide
• CSIRO

Keywords

There are three main thesauri that AusCover recommends:

1. Global Change Master Directory (http://gcmd.nasa.gov)
2. Climate and Forecast (CF) convention standard names (http://cfconventions.org/standard-names.html).
3. Fields of Research codes (http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/6BB427AB9696C225CA2574180004463E?opendocument).

Data quality

Some site specific issues relating to data quality may exist. Please see the ancillary data for specific details. 

Validation status

This is a validation data set. No validation is intended for this data set.

Related products

References

Sampling strategy

Data is typically selected at a single location, during overflight, alongside hyperspectral ground calibration data collection. A sample is taken approximately every 10 minutes.  Full details of the field data collection are outlined in the field data protocol contained in the references of this document.  Deviations from this strategy are outlined in the associated shapefile/KMZ file for this data set.

Product version history

Shapefile/CSV file attributes

The information in the following table consist of metadata relating to the attribute fields in both the shapefile and KMZ file relating to this product.

Metadata history